


poor excuse for poetry (play it cool)

by CatchAsCatchCan



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 5+1 Things, Height Differences, M/M, featuring angst about the inevitable tragedy of being a second overall pick, having a crisis over how tall ur bro is the travis konecny story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 13:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20836424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatchAsCatchCan/pseuds/CatchAsCatchCan
Summary: TK isn’t, like, unaware of how big Nolan is. He just sometimes has to block it out for the sake of his own mental well-being.Or, TK has a crisis in five parts.





	poor excuse for poetry (play it cool)

**Author's Note:**

> To the shock of absolutely everybody, I actually finished one of my four hundred WIPs! College is killing me so I’m procrastinating my differential equations midterm by writing nonsense.
> 
> This is the product of Calla and I going absolutely feral on twitter about how Large Nolan Patrick is. I know the “official” “stats” say he’s 6’2” but c’mon. We’ve all seen that video of him fighting Tom Wilson. 
> 
> This has been, like, marginally edited. The title comes from epitaph, by hippo campus.

TK isn’t, like, unaware of how big Nolan is. He just sometimes has to block it out for the sake of his own mental well-being. 

Except, sometimes it’s a lot harder to ignore. Like right now, standing in this shitty Philly bar at one in the morning on a Friday night. He’s not quite sure how they ended up here, but sympathy-slash-despair drinks at the prospect of yet another injured goalie were probably involved. 

The speakers are blaring some top 40s pop ballad that Nolan would absolutely hate if he weren’t halfway wasted. They’re both too tired to do more than vaguely bop along, and Nolan keeps having to flick sweaty hair out of his eyes. 

TK lists against the bar, ignoring how it kind of sticks to his back. He can feel Patty moving on his right, arms brushing every few beats as they sway. He’s pointedly staring up into the middle distance, because if he doesn’t look, he doesn’t have to acknowledge the way he barely comes up past Patty’s shoulder. He’s ignoring a lot right now. It’s fine. 

If he leaned over, he could probably put all of his weight on Nolan without either of them even stumbling.

The beer he’s been holding for the past twenty minutes tastes kind of gross when he downs it in one gulp, but he’s distantly glad for the distraction when Patty turns towards him, grinning. 

“What?”

Nolan just gestures vaguely to the speakers over the bar. TK blinks at him for a few seconds, before picking out the first words of the song playing. Fucking _Party in the USA_, from that stupid promo video. 

Nolan elbows him in the side, not hard enough to hurt but just enough to be annoying.

“Gonna show us your moves?” Nolan’s voice is almost too low to hear over the thrumming bassline, alcohol stretching out his vowels. 

TK has never once in his life turned down a dare. He should, maybe, revise this policy. Whatever. 

He turns to the side, looking Patty right in the eyes for the first time all night. This close, Nolan fucking looms over him.

“You dancing too?”

Nolan furrows his brow at him, a fond imitation of a scowl. “Thought you did the dancing here, not me.”

TK rolls his eyes and doesn’t think about the consequences. 

He grabs one of Patty’s hands, twisting his arm so that Patty has no choice but to spin under TK’s arm like a fucking ballerina. A huge, tipsy ballerina that almost loses his footing and falls over before managing to complete the turn, but a ballerina in the loosest sense of the word nonetheless. TK is a baller dancer, is what he’s saying. 

Nolan makes a surprised noise, and then busts out laughing, the kind of rare full-body laugh that TK is always trying to get out of him. He bows over, bracing himself on the bar, forehead almost touching TK’s shoulder. 

TK extremely did not think this through. It takes Nolan a full minute to stop laughing, dissolving back into tipsy snorts of laughter every few seconds. 

“The hell was _that_?” he gets out, once he catches his breath. TK can feel little puffs of air hot air against his collarbone with every word. 

“Dancing,” he offers, voice a little softer and a little croakier than he would like. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

* * *

TK fucking hates the team plane after games. He’s not scared of flying, but he hates feeling trapped more than anything. 

They had to leave straight from the stadium, getting ready for a harsh set of back-to-back games, so he’s even more keyed up than usual. He feels too big for his body, energy from his second period goal still coursing right underneath his skin.

They’ve been in the air for ages, and it’s past midnight, and if TK doesn’t get up he’s going to explode. 

He gingerly unbuckles his seatbelt, careful not to wake the rest of the sleeping plane. He’s not the only one up—he can see Ghost playing candy crush—but he’s the only one moving around. 

He’s got headphones on, but he’s not listening to anything except the sounds of the engine and his teammates shifting in uncomfortable airplane seats. Under his bare feet, the floor of the plane is cold. It feels grounding, almost. 

TK walks slowly up the aisle, careful not to kick any stray legs. He shakes his arms, working out the energy he feels built up in every muscle. At the front of the plane, he turns, spins on his toes, and walks another slow lap back down the aisle. 

Up and down, up and down. He can feel the energy of the game slowly start to seep out of him. 

He’s making his fourth pass up the plane when he feels someone tug the earbuds right out of his ears. 

“What’re you doing,” Nolan says, but it’s sleep-slurred and comes out more like _wareyoudoin_. In the dim plane light, TK can see that his eyes are barely open. Immediately, he flushes with guilt. Patty must be exhausted. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” he murmurs, rubbing his hands up and down his arms. 

Nolan shifts until he’s resting against the side of the plane, back to the window and one leg splayed out across the seats. He pushes the arm rests up. “C’mere.”

“Huh?”

But before can get a word out, Nolan reaches up and pulls on his sweatshirt, almost pulling him into his lap. TK lands awkwardly, his side against Nolan and his head just above his shoulder.

Nolan winds an arm around his waist like a vice, pulling TK into his chest. “Go the fuck to sleep,” he grumbles, the words vibrating against TK’s cheek.

TK is a short player in a professional sport where the average height is well over six feet. He feels small pretty much every day of his life, but never quite like this. Patty’s hand is splayed across his side, burning like a warm brand into his hip. He can feel Nolan’s breath even out, a slow rising and falling that steadies the constant buzzing in TK’s brain. 

He has just a moment to think, ‘There’s no way I can fall asleep like this,’ before he passes the fuck out.

* * *

There’s forty-two seconds left in a long fought game against the Capitals when TK accepts that this just his life now.

It's been the kind of drawn out, scoreless game that both players and fans hate, tied at zero going into the end of the third. Holtby is like a fucking wall in net, and the Flyers are only alive by the skin of Hartsy’s teeth. 

And then, finally, _finally_, TK sees an opening appear between two pairs of legs. He sends the puck through to Nolan and when he hears the roar of the crowd, he knows Patty got it done. As the crowd in front of the net clears, he sees Nolan fist pumping and grinning, coming right at him.

Nolan whoops and slams into him, crouched low. He’s shouting so loudly TK can barely hear himself think _holy shit_ when Nolan straightens up and lifts him entirely off his feet. Nolan’s momentum spins them around and around and TK isn’t even touching the ground.

His mind whites out. The only things he can feel are Nolan’s huge hands wrapped around his waist and the way his own fingers are clenched up in the 19 of Nolan’s jersey.

Nolan is so fucking big. Jesus-fucking-Carter-Hart-Christ.

Five seconds, or minutes, or hours later, Nolan slams backwards into the boards and lets go of him. TK steadies himself against the glass and absolutely doesn’t have to stop himself from reaching out at the loss of contact, because that would be absurd. 

His cheeks still feel hot when they come off the ice.

* * *

Claude and Coots take over TK’s room to watch tape, mostly because TK is, of the top line, definitely the only one who knows how to connect the XBox to the hotel television.

(And Flyers’ top line, isn’t that a trip. TK has to pinch himself sometimes. Patty caught him doing it once and had rolled his eyes, before saying in his low, marble-mouthed voice, the one that means he’s expressing an emotion and would much rather not, “You deserve it, idiot.”)

TK, somewhat valiantly, attempts to pay attention without bouncing his legs for fifteen minutes, before G unceremoniously kicks him out of his own hotel room. 

“Go find your partner in crime and work off some damn energy, kid.”

TK can feel himself go brilliantly red thinking about how exactly he’d like to _work off some damn energy_ and scrambles off the bed before Claude can see. He practically runs out of the door, but he’s certain he can hear Coots snickering behind him. 

When they were in the lobby, Nolan had slapped his spare room key into TK’s palm and wandered away. TK is, like, fervently not reading into that. It’s not a big deal.

After fumbling with the keycard twice, TK finally manages to get Nolan’s door open. The door swings open and TK comes face to face with Nolan doing pushups on the floor. The noise TK makes is decidedly not dignified.

Nolan barely looks up, eyes focused on the floor in front of him. He’s wearing a shirt with the sleeves ripped off and has his hair up in a tiny ponytail on the top of his head. It does not look particularly good on him. TK can’t stop staring. It’s fine.

Nolan grunts at him, presumably to close the damn door. TK closes the damn door. 

TK takes several deep breaths, focusing on the floor in front of Patty’s hands. He is, in fact, not allowed to think about Patty’s hands until he gets to the bottom of what the fuck is going on.

“Hey, bud. What’s with the—uh. The— that?” he asks, not eloquently. Whatever. 

Nolan flicks his head up to glare halfheartedly at him. Now that TK is looking, he can see the circles under his eyes. He pauses for a second, considers, and then plops down right in front of Nolan, criss-cross-applesauce. 

Nolan startles backwards, and collapses onto his knees. Now they’re both just sitting on this gross hotel carpet like idiots. 

“Patty. Dude. Are you doing, like, penance pushups?” 

Nolan’s not looking him in the eyes, which means TK is right. “How do you even know what ‘penance’ means?”

“Google, duh, but don’t deflect, bud.” He knows that Nolan has been in kind of a scoring drought lately, hasn’t gotten a point in the last week or so. He hadn’t, however, thought it was a problem until now. 

He also knows that he can either try to drag it out of Patty, or they can stay here until Nolan decides to answer. If he wants to talk, he will. (And from past experience, TK knows he probably does, but would literally rather take a Chara slapshot to the face before admitting that.)

He’s right. After about thirty seconds of shifty silence, Nolan sighs, rubs his hands across his face, and says, “I should probably be in Vancouver right now.” 

TK blinks. “What?” 

"I should probably have gone to Vancouver, right?” 

TK is extremely not following. “I mean, you can always go to Vancouver? I’m pretty sure you can, like, afford a plane ticket. Not sure why you would want to though, it’s a fucking wasteland over there.”

Nolan rolls his eyes. “I meant in the draft.” He doesn’t call TK a moron, but his eyes suggest he wants to.

And—oh. _Oh._

TK rockets up onto his knees and waddles forward so that he’s only an inch or so away from Nolan. Like this, for once he has a height advantage and Nolan is looking up at him through his lashes. He puts his hands on Nolan’s shoulders and wills every impure thought out of his head. 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” 

“Pettersson. He’s probably going to win the Calder. That’s what they keep saying at least.”

TK knows Nolan knows better than to read his own press. Things are worse than he thought.

“So fucking what? He’s not all that, man.”

Nolan blinks. “What? I just said, he’s probably going to—” 

TK cuts him off. “So what! McDavid didn’t win the Calder, I didn’t win a Calder, who gives a fuck!” 

Nolan snorts. “Philadelphia, for one. Seems like the entire fucking city of Philadelphia gives a fuck.”

TK stops, considers. “Okay, but nobody who _matters_ gives a fuck. I don’t want Pettersson. Could you imagine his tiny string bean body trying to take the kind of hits we do?” TK can feel Nolan’s shoulders start to shake at that, and he prays it’s laughter and not something else. “I don’t want Pettersson,” he repeats. “I want—"

They both freeze. Nolan looks up and meets his eyes for the first time all night. They’re so close together and TK can’t breathe.

Nolan jolts forward, pressing his face into TK’s shoulder. His cheeks are definitely wet. Carefully, gently, TK takes his hands off Nolan’s shoulders and wraps them around his back. He buries his face in Nolan’s sweaty, disgusting hair.

Slowly, so slowly it feels like it’s not even really happening, Nolan reaches forward and drapes his arms around TK’s waist. Nolan never, ever, asks for comfort like this.

So quietly TK can barely hear him, Nolan murmurs, “I’m glad you’re here too.”

They stay pressed together, kneeling on the carpet until TK’s legs start to cramp and Nolan stops shaking.

* * *

They don’t bring up what happened in the hotel room. The whole moment feels like it’s encased in glass, and TK is loathe to shatter the illusion of normalcy. But, he is paying closer attention now. Watching Patty’s moods and shit. Looking out for him. It’s not a big deal. 

The end of the season is hurtling towards them like a freight train. They haven’t been mathematically eliminated yet, but it’s pretty damn obvious what’s going to happen. The mood of the whole locker room is subdued; Nolan’s gotten quieter and TK has gotten even louder to fill the space. 

They’ve been playing marginally better this week, and TK has put up a respectable number of points. On the drive to the rink, he tells Nolan that he’s feeling good about this game, which was a rookie fucking mistake.

All of this to say, he doesn’t see the hit coming. 

They’re on a power play with a real scoring chance for the first time in like three games. He’s got the puck and he’s racing towards the net, when someone rockets him into the boards. He’s more dazed than anything, and his leg fucking hurts, but he can tell nothing is broken. Thank god. 

Then, as he’s hobbling up with the help of a linesman, he hears the arena start screaming. It’s the kind of home crowd, bloodthirsty howl that mean someone is about to get their ass handed to them. 

He scans the ice for Simmer or G, before following the trail of dropped gloves to see Nolan, incandescent and spitting mad, slamming his right fist into someone’s side. TK knows, without even looking, that it’s whoever hit him.

Nolan is fighting. Jesus Christ. Nolan is fighting _for him_.

He’s properly standing at this point, and skates forward, intending to do what he doesn’t know, just as Nolan fucking drops the guy.

Whistles sound off across the ice and Nolan is roughly pulled back and shoved towards the tunnel. His helmet was lost sometime during the fight and his hair is going wild where his jersey got pulled up. His cheeks are blazing red and he looks like he would burn down this entire arena if given a match.

It’s not that TK isn’t always uncomfortably aware of how big Nolan is, lately. But sometimes he forgets that if he wanted, Nolan could probably toss him the length of the rink. He could definitely beat him in a fight. Or pin him to a wall. Or—

* * *

TK is fine to stay on the bench for the rest of the second period, after some poking and prodding from their trainers. He still feels winded, almost like he just got boarded. His left leg won’t stop bouncing, until Ghost puts his hand on his knee and shoots him a look that probably means ‘hold it together, man.’

After the clock runs down, he follows the team into the tunnel but breaks off when he sees an occupied trainers’ room.

When he opens the door, Nolan looks up from icing his knuckles. He’s clearly already showered and is in the process of putting on his suit again, slacks on and shirt partially buttoned.

TK snatches the ice pack out of his hands and when Nolan opens his mouth to complain, he snatches Nolan’s hand too. 

“Why did you do that?” TK asks, voice much steadier than he feels, as he holds the ice on Nolan’s right hand. 

Nolan scrunches up his nose. “Get in a fight?”

“No, dude, we’re Flyers, that’s what we do.” 

“Then, what—”

TK feels brave enough, suddenly, to look Nolan in the eye. “Why did you get in a fight _for me_?”

Nolan chokes on nothing. “I didn’t—I mean I would have for anyone, you know? Can’t let anyone get hurt.”

TK switches the hand he’s holding the ice pack to and says, conversationally, “Two weeks ago when Malkin hit G, you didn’t fight Malkin.”

“Yeah, obviously I didn’t fight Malkin, guy’s a tank. And G can take care of himself, I think.”

TK feels like he’s closing in on something here. “And I can’t?”

“That’s not—I didn’t—” Nolan cuts himself off, and leans back against the table. “When you went down, you didn’t get back up. God, Trav, you don’t know how small you looked.”

“So what, you were scared?”

“Yeah.”

Nolan isn’t looking at him. It feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room. TK drops Nolan’s hands and Nolan makes a low, hurt noise in the back of his throat.

TK knows, just like he did back in the hotel room, that admitting that wasn’t easy. So, now it’s his turn to be brave. 

He steps forward so his knees knock into Nolan’s. “When you fought that guy, I wasn’t scared.”

“Huh?”

“You’re like half a foot taller than him. You probably could have killed him, dude.”

He’s not quite able to meet Nolan’s eyes and he’s doing his damn level best not to stare at his mouth, so he barely catches it when Nolan mutters, “Kind of wanted to kill him.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

TK slides his hand up to cup Nolan’s face. Nolan’s eyebrows quirk like he’s holding back a smile, and TK can’t help it when he blurts out, “You’re like half a foot taller than me too.”

Nolan makes a weird noise, and when he says “I know,” it comes out strangled.

When TK looks up, his eyes are dark. Almost like—

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “You into that?”

Nolan gapes down at him with his big stupid mouth. “_What_?” It comes out shrilly. He moves his arms up, probably to run his hands through his hair the way he always does, but TK catches them, takes a deep breath, and puts Nolan’s hands on his hips.

Nolan’s breath catches.

“Yeah, you’re into that.” TK feels smug as hell.

“You are so—!” and Nolan cuts himself off by tugging TK in by his waist and kissing him full on the mouth. It’s a big deal.

TK has to stand on his toes. Nolan’s hands are huge and warm on his hips and he’s been waiting for this for-fucking-ever.

He pulls back for a second, just to grin against Nolan’s mouth. “Yeah, you want to get all up in this.”

Nolan snorts. “All _down_ in that, maybe.”

TK’s squawk of indignation is cut off as Nolan kisses him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Not at all related to this work, but I wrote a stupid university AU based on that craigslist missed connection a few months ago. If you read that fic, or gave it kudos, or commented on it, thank you so much because that was incredibly cool for a first time writer to see. 
> 
> Hope y'all liked this! It's nonsense.
> 
> You can also find me on twitter [@catchascatchcn](https://www.twitter.com/catchascatchcn)!


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